{"id":110276,"date":"2024-12-02T13:00:34","date_gmt":"2024-12-02T18:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=110276"},"modified":"2024-12-02T12:25:02","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T17:25:02","slug":"acc-net-rankings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2024\/12\/02\/acc-net-rankings\/","title":{"rendered":"NET Rankings Reaction: ACC Improves Initial Ranking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every year, the college basketball world awaits the initial NET rankings. They are finally here<\/a>, so what is the NET rankings reaction for the ACC? There are several reasons to be optimistic moving forward. Moreover, there is a drastic improvement in the ranking of ACC contenders,<\/a> with several teams finding themselves in the hunt for the bubble, too. We will first take a look at the initial rankings last season and how that affected tournament aspirations. After that, we will dive into what was a pleasantly surprising initial NET ranking for the ACC.<\/p>\n

NET Rankings Reaction: ACC Improves Initial Ranking<\/h2>\n

Last Season<\/h3>\n

The NCAA Tournament committee insists that the entire season matters. On Selection Sunday, the NCAA Tournament committee decided that non-conference play mattered more than anything. The ACC initially had four teams in what is considered to be an at-large spot: Clemson, Virginia, North Carolina, and Duke. When the NCAA Tournament rolled around, those four teams were the at-large bids for the ACC. Those teams moved up and down, including Virginia, falling 14 spots behind Pittsburgh. The Panthers also beat the Cavaliers by 11. None of that mattered because the non-conference schedule had already decided who made the tournament.<\/p>\n

I respect the non-conference being important. A team that plays a bottom 30 strength of schedule in non-conference shouldn’t be getting a one seed in the NCAA Tournament often, if ever. However, the committee has set a precedent where conference play matters more for seeding than qualification. This in itself is a NET rankings reaction since Virginia got blown away in the First Four while Pittsburgh sat at home despite playing some of the best basketball in the ACC. The NET rankings are not omniscient. However, every year, some teams miss out and look to be better according to the metrics and the eye test. Let’s trust these metrics but return to respecting conference play so that we don’t see the exact same trend this year as we saw last year.<\/p>\n

NET Rankings Reaction 1: Much Higher Ceiling<\/h3>\n

Last season, Clemson started as the highest-ranked team in the ACC at 18. This season, the ACC has three teams in the Top 18. Coincidentally, Clemson is right back at 18, while Duke and Pittsburgh sit at four and five, respectively. Pitt has looked to be one of the best teams in the ACC, and the metrics are certainly on their side. Duke looked to be a contender, but two losses to other contenders appeared to set them back. I was surprised to see them ranked fifth in the initial ranking. Cooper Flagg<\/a> and company beat up teams in their wins, but can they beat an Auburn team that sits above them in the NET rankings?<\/p>\n

North Carolina and Louisville also find themselves at 26 and 30, respectively. The increase from two to five teams in the top 30 is significant. I’ve said this multiple times, but the more teams that find themselves at the top of the rankings, the more respect the conference will get. Recent precedent says that all five of these teams will make the NCAA Tournament. Every game against these five opponents would be considered a Quad one (Q1) game. Q1 games make the committee salivate when picking teams for the NCAA Tournament. There is still time left in the non-conference schedule, but it is promising for the conference to have this much more respect at this point in this season. The ACC certainly will have a positive NET rankings reaction at the top.<\/p>\n

NET Rankings Reaction 2: Drop-off to Consistent Middle<\/h3>\n

Unfortunately, the ACC will not be happy with a 34-spot drop-off following Louisville. SMU sits at 64 as the sixth-highest ACC team. However, the ACC has six teams ranked between 64 and 97. It’s important to look at last season to understand this on a different level. Last season, the sixth through 11th highest teams in the ACC were spread out from 60 to 133. The sixth-ranked team is similar, but the gap is majorly closing in the middle.<\/p>\n

Naturally, the ACC would love for a team to be between 30 and 64. However, they have to be happy about a compact middle-tier of teams in the conference. A strong middle creates higher-quality games in conference play, which should allow teams to continue to move up in the rankings. The ACC has struggled to win important games<\/a>, but their ranking in the middle has improved drastically. As long as the ACC doesn’t majorly struggle in the next few weeks of non-conference play, at least one of these middle-tier teams will find themselves with an at-large bid in the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n

NET Rankings Reaction 3: The Almost-Guaranteed Improvement<\/h3>\n

I feel confident making the final statement in the last section because of one trend that only comes in the major conferences: improvement. Last season, out of the 10 teams who were ranked sixth to fifteenth in the initial NET rankings, nine of them improved their ranking in conference play. Consistently playing better opponents will improve a team’s NET ranking. This is what makes the previous two sections even more important. By increasing the quality of opponents, the bottom teams will improve their ranking by simply playing the better teams. Wake Forest and Notre Dame increased their NET rankings by 90 or more spots from the initial ranking last season.<\/p>\n

Pitt and Duke will likely drop slightly as the season goes on, but North Carolina will likely rise from 26. There are plenty of trends that support the middle- and lower-tier teams improving as the season goes on with better competition. This will only help the ACC in the long run as they hope to improve on last season’s disappointing representation in the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n

The Last Word<\/h3>\n

The ACC improved. They have struggled to win many important games this season, but that hasn’t affected their NET rankings. The overall NET rankings reaction is positive. The SEC\/ACC Challenge has crucial matchups<\/a> that could help improve their standing even further. Duke, Pitt, Clemson, North Carolina, and Louisville all hold their own fate to improve their NET ranking. Florida State has a Q1 game of its own. Overall, this week could help spark a more significant improvement for the ACC. Either way, the ACC has to be happy about their positioning this season compared to last season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every year, the college basketball world awaits the initial NET rankings. They are finally here, so what is the NET rankings reaction for the ACC? There are several reasons to be optimistic moving forward. Moreover, there is a drastic improvement in the ranking of ACC contenders, with several teams finding themselves in the hunt for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5370,"featured_media":110301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[773,1608],"tags":[3120,1457,861,882,832,914,49588],"class_list":["post-110276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-basketball","category-basketball","tag-acc-basketball","tag-clemson-tigers","tag-duke-blue-devils","tag-louisville-cardinals","tag-ncaa-tournament","tag-north-carolina-tar-heels","tag-pitt-panthers"],"modified_by":"Eamon Cassels, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5370"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110276"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110302,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110276\/revisions\/110302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}